


The only thing worth knowing

by CoinToYourWitcher



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Age Difference, All song fics all the time, And a Rey reverse torture scene, Angst, Because time travel, Canon Compliant, Canon ages, Cussing, Enemies to Lovers, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Forbidden Love, Force Awakens torture scene, Force Bond (Star Wars), Hurt/Comfort, I am an angst whore, I promise, Imprisonment, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, Kylo is 29, Loss of Virginity, Mind Reading, Rape, Rape during force sleep, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rey is 19, Reylo - Freeform, Violence, canonverse, dark AF, dark themes, perspective changes, twice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:19:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 13
Words: 17,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26112529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoinToYourWitcher/pseuds/CoinToYourWitcher
Summary: Kylo is so mad that Rey escaped the interrogation room that he uses his timedoor to go back far enough to take out his rage on her. Then time travel and guilt and imprisonment and slow burn and redemption.
Relationships: Kylo Ren & Rey, Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo
Comments: 122
Kudos: 181





	1. Not what you had in mind

**Author's Note:**

> Image of bloody nose Kylo in my moodboard by insta: @ragenruin | tumblr: kittrose   
> 
> 
> [The Spotify Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7etV4yydTasOAAkJU0sZgn?si=WjvyUemEQ1OvcWIiO_OBWw)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Well spent time  
>  In the early morning's haze  
> You sit and wait  
> Watching through glasses  
> Through blank eyes  
> This is not what you wanted  
> Not what you had in mind  
> This is not what you wanted  
> Not what you had in mind**
> 
> Bad Kingdom by May, Robot Koch

[ ](https://ibb.co/bBnjR0D)   
  


“You do it, Master,” Rey pleaded as they traversed the steps down into Maz’s keep. 

They passed Finn and he nodded. He was on guard duty that day. The Resistance fighters all took turns, but he probably wasn’t expecting to see Rey there. At the castle, not lifting rocks somewhere in the forest or running obstacles or trying to fix BB8, still in a million pieces after the battle.

Leia thought she was ready, but she felt like she was going to throw up. Her face was hot and walking was hard when she was dizzy like this.

“Nothing to fret over. I’m not going to push. I’m just going to pry,” Leia whispered in confidence as they took the final steps towards the prisoner’s room.

After the Battle of Takodana, the Resistance had taken a handful of captives. Leia was working her way up, one at a time by their rank. Interrogating. It had been months of tediously gathering information through ‘mind reading’. But Leia wanted Rey to be ready. 

Because her son was the final prisoner, kept in a force collar, separately, deep in one of the caves. And Leia couldn’t see him like that. A darksider. She wanted Rey to observe the method and then do the same to him.

Rey wasn’t sure how she’d done it. Captured _the_ Kylo Ren. If anything, she’d say he had a moment of weakness, chasing her through the forest and sunken creek beds. 

_“Stop running or I’ll make you stop,” Kylo Ren threatened, his voice monotone, but he sounded irked._

_She was running and he was walking, his long legs still gaining on her. Like hells she’d stop, he had a lightsaber! She was regretting leaving the one she’d found with Maz._

_Rey shot at him again with Han’s blaster, a red beam that sparked on a rock near his helmet as he lumbered after her, the kickback jolting her arm in it’s socket._

“Hello,” Leia said warmly to the stormtrooper, dressed down to his black underclothes. She always started off that way. Offering them creature comforts and attempting to make them see reason. But they were all so brainwashed. Especially the ones higher in rank. Like this Lieutenant,‘BT6748’, as he called himself, a member of ‘Commander Ren’s’ Silencer support.

“Got no more to say to you, _Princess_ ,” he said sarcastically, standing and raising himself up to his full height. He looked rough, with mean, blue eyes and his short, spiky haircut growing out at all angles, but Leia continued as if she were talking to any of her subordinates.

“You mentioned last time that Ben took you to the world of Lothal recently,” Leia prompted curiously. She never referred to Kylo Ren by his Sith apprentice name. 

_He was closer and closer and even when she aimed the blaster correctly, he swatted the beams like flies._

_Tired with the bother, Kylo whipped the gun out of her hand with a lazy flick of his glove. He’d used the force, nearly taking her fingers off as the gun went spiraling silently into a bed of moss._

_She held her hands up as he bore down on her with his crackling lightsaber. A silent request for mercy._

That was her first encounter with the force. Unless she counted the time she touched Luke’s saber for the first time and saw visions of the past and future. Her parent’s ship. The nightmare that was Kylo Ren. Coming for her. _Her_ saber now. Kinda. She practiced with it. Felt good to have at hand with Kylo Ren on the other side of the cliffs.

“Eat. Shit,” BT6748 bit through his teeth. _Rebel scum,_ he thought. 

Rey heard it and Leia smiled, proud of her.

The lieutenant was chained by an ankle to the wall, so Leia took another step closer, boldly lifting her arm, delicate fingers open and tense as she ‘pried’. 

Rey was so emotional, she couldn’t do it right. She hated them. And their disrespect for Leia made her angry. And one shouldn’t mind read when they were angry. It was dangerous.

“How did he get past the barrier?” Leia said, lowering her hand. “That temple was secure. Only a master and padawan working in tandem could-.”

“We blew it up,” he laughed in her face. “What? Did you think he was going to be sneaky about it?”

Leia’s face had gone white. “Well, no matter. Because your commander is with _us_ now,” she said, curtly. 

Whatever weapon Kylo had stolen from the temple was neutralized. Because Rey had captured him.

The lieutenant frowned, taken aback by this turn of events. He had been there for a dozen weeks, blending together and punctuated by meals, wash basins, laundered clothing, and three visits from General Organa, the only force sensitive capable of this brand of inquiry. The gentle kind. 

Rey felt satisfied as they left. His smug face wiped to that of confusion.

Leia didn’t speak of what she’d _heard_ until they were back at the base, a bustling encampment near the forest’s edge, Maz’s Castle in the distance and a swinging bridge to the caves on the cliff side.

Rey ate in Leia’s quarters, stretching out in the cockpit of her ship. “You’re still pale. Are you going to tell me?”

Leia smiled, “That temple was one of the first. Built on caves that were said to portalize the World Between Worlds. Such a shame my son didn’t see fit to preserve it. He has a thing for collecting trophies. For someone who claims so openly that he will erase the Jedi and the past, he sure seems to idolize it.”

Rey pulled her feet off the console. “What did he take?”

“Our trooper wasn’t privy,” Leia said, sliding into the captain’s chair. “I think it’s time.”

“No,” Rey said, choking on her bread. She wasn’t ready. She could barely read a brainwashed stormtrooper, much less _Kylo Ren_.

“He’ll have the collar on, Rey,” Leia reminded her.

“It only dulls his abilities though!” Rey said, too loudly, reaching for a wrench and tightening bolts on the guts that was once BB8. Somewhere in this pile of circuits was a map to Luke Skywalker. Poe had put it there for safekeeping and she was still too embarrassed to tell him she’d let BB8 be destroyed.

“And your abilities are growing,” Leia said. “You pick up thoughts without hardly trying now.”

“Well he thought that insult rather loudly,” Rey muttered.

Leia sighed. “I need you to do it. I need you to try. Tomorrow you’ll go to the caves. You’ll read Ben and report back to me. I want to know what he took from Lothal. What the First Order is planning. And if there is good in him, how do we convince him to turn back to the light.”

These all sounded like impossible feats. A stormtrooper thinking something wasn’t the same as gathering memories, hidden ones the prisoner was burying, walling up out of sight.

_Kylo retracted the spitting, unstable cross saber, stopping only three feet from where she kneeled in the grass. She hadn’t realized how loud the lightsaber was until it was off._

_“Come with me. Back to my ship,” his voice reverberated mechanically. “The emperor wants me to bring you to him.”_

_Rey looked around for anything. A rock or anything she could use. He wanted to take her prisoner! Her! Who was she? Nobody!_

_She felt a tendril of consciousness, like a finger running along her temple. Looking up, his arm was raised, his glove out over her, but not touching her. How could he be touching her?_

_“Stand. Walk.” He ordered, and she was lifted to her feet by invisible hands._

_“Get your fucking hands off me!” She hissed, even though they weren’t. His hands were swinging slightly by his sides. It still felt inappropriate. Intimate. She’d rather him have just knocked her out if he was going to do this against her will._

_“No, I’ve done that already. You slept forever,” he said quickly, impatiently._

_What?_

_She felt the hands on her again, pushing her lower back, behind her neck too, one sliding lower to press her legs into motion when she resisted, but it went right over her ass to get there and she fumed, exploding. Reaching out with her own hands—force ones, not her real ones—Rey fumbled at the unguarded consciousness behind the mask and snuffed it like a candle flame between her fingertips._

_Kylo Ren collapsed at her heels with a thump and the giant, invisible hands on her body ceased pushing her._

_She waited, shocked, then monitored him suspiciously for any signs of movement as she groped around for the blaster, found it, then pointed it shakily at his masked face. When he didn’t move, she decided she’d feel better if she could see his eyes, make sure he wasn’t waking up. Creeping closer, she found the subtle buttons on either side of his heavy, black helmet and it hissed as she tugged it off and held it over him like a weapon._

_He was definitely out. And he was younger and...not what she had in mind. His wavy, dark hair laid out on the grass, his wide mouth slack, breathing fine. He didn’t even need a full helmet._

_Rey wasn’t sure how long he would sleep. Scrambling to her feet, she ran to find Han and the others, taking his helmet with her as proof._

  
When Rey agreed to train under Leia, she had never actually agreed to do this. Interrogate people. Be alone with _him_. This was not what she wanted.


	2. Beneath the stain of time, the feeling disappears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **On my liar's chair  
>  Full of broken thoughts  
> I cannot repair  
> Beneath the stain of time  
> The feeling disappears  
> You are someone else  
> I am still right here  
> What have I become?**
> 
> Hurt by Nine Inch Nails
> 
> This song does weird things to your ears at the beginning. It’s kind of unsettling. Pretend you’re Kylo and that’s how it feels to be wearing a force collar. ;)
> 
> [The Spotify Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7etV4yydTasOAAkJU0sZgn?si=WjvyUemEQ1OvcWIiO_OBWw)

The guards weren’t allowed to make fun of him—like they were itching to—but that didn’t stop them from dropping his plate of food in the mud a few times ‘by accident’ before it reached him every day. And he was kind of a picky eater. So he was losing weight fast.

There were only twenty or so, taking watch in shifts of two, a lookout far away and a guard close by. He knew the good ones and the bad ones. Not all of their names, but their faces and habits. Enough information to make an adequate list of who he was going to kill and who he’d merely injure.

Today was Poe—injure only—bringing him a clean, full plate of food. Sandwich, local plant life, some kind of green tuber. 

Strange that Kylo was the prisoner now, after he had Poe on the Finalizer’s interrogation table a few short months ago. The First Order wouldn’t have wasted food on him.

Kylo stared blankly at him, rather than glaring. It wasn’t like Poe had loosened the painful bindings on his wrists or supplied him with an actual bed. He was just doing his job the way it was supposed to be done.

He heard movement in the tunnel. Poe was whispering to someone. Kylo wanted to eat, but he waited. Every new person was an opportunity to escape. Sometimes he’d get a kindly old woman—no injury needed—with soap and water and towels. But she had been by just yesterday.

_Rey_ stepped in, looking around and spotting him where he crouched in the dark like a rancor in a pit. Her eyes ran over his force collar, hands bound in front, ankle chain trailing to the wall, and seemed satisfied he couldn’t get to her.

He tried to read her thoughts to find out what she was doing there, but the collar muffled it. Like straining to listen with cotton stuffed in his ears. 

Rey looked older, better fed, her clothes neat and washed and white. Her figure softer-

“Do you _mind_?” She said uncomfortably, a rebuke.

Ben grinned. _So she has a teacher._

“Yeah, your mother,” she said pointedly, in that proud, confident way that she spoke, sitting down and leaning on the far wall of the small cavern, her white clothes already ruined, though she didn’t seem to care. _Little desert rat._

Her greenish eyes squinted in loathing. “Let’s get this over with so I can go back outside. It’s cold as Hoth down here.”

_An expression_ , Kylo assumed. She’d never been anywhere but Takodana and Jakku.

“What are we getting over with?” Kylo asked, watching the confidence melt from her face.

“You’re going to tell me what you got from the Lothal temple. And I’ll ask them to bring you a bed,” she negotiated.

Kylo wished he could pull his sleeve lower—damn bindings—but kept his mind off of it. Because she could read a little bit. And he was wearing the artifact like a watch. He would have activated it, if his bindings weren’t so extensive and tight, leaving his forearms raw, making the slightest movement excruciating.

“I’ll give you something,” Kylo said, as if tempted.

“What?” She said hopefully.

“How about eleven inches?”

“Hey, watch it, you greasy Sith son of a bitch!” Poe said from the entrance way, running up to strike Kylo across the cheek, hard enough to make his jaw hit the bulky, metal collar, and to add Poe’s name to the kill list.

It didn’t matter anyway, because Rey didn’t get the joke. _Still untouched in this timeline._

“What did you just say?” She asked, incredulously. “What _timeline_?”

He had a flash, a little memory slipping through. 

_Rey naked on her back on the floor of the interrogation room. The one on Starkiller Base. Him separating her knees._

Present Rey stood and bent over, emptying her stomach behind a rock and he felt her wave of anxiety and humiliation and confusion, a piece of contact with the force as life-giving as the meal growing cold in front of him.

Poe rubbed her back but she righted herself and told him to wait outside.

Wiping her mouth, she slowly made eye contact with Kylo again, trying to determine no doubt if the graphic images she had seen in his head were real or fantasy.

“I’ve got more, if you liked that,” Kylo teased. It felt good—to torture her—flipping the tables. He thought back again.

_Stuffing his hard cock in her, fat with blood and soused in her come—not that she was consenting—she was asleep_.

“What an imagination you have,” she said through clenched teeth.

He didn’t bother to correct her. She could sense the truth in his looks and she swallowed and shook her head.

“You never got me to a ship,” Rey informed him. “I knocked you right out. You fell like a tree.”

_This time._ Kylo thought, a test. He could keep his responses secret from Poe the eavesdropping, punch-happy guard.

“What does that _mean_?” 

_Good hearing._ She was a natural. He gave her a little bit of their first meeting. 

_He force froze her blaster hand and pushed it so the barrel faced the ground._

_“The girl I’ve heard so much about,” he said, quietly, his helmet voice synthesizer also acting as an amplifier, making him more imposing. Not that he needed it, over a foot taller and twice her size._

_“The droid,” he said, checking the area for any signs of her companions. He pictured his uncle’s face. He’d skewer him in his sleep._

_“Where is it?” He asked gently, juxtaposing his tone by lowering his saber close enough to her shoulder that her cheek would feel the heat._

“That never happened,” Rey said, flustered now, pacing.

_Kylo raised a hand, watching her pretty face contort as he pushed his way forcefully into her mind. Painful thing, being read. Like having your skull crushed from the inside out. Like a star imploding. But she had what he wanted. One fucking droid and he could kill the Jedi religion off. Superstitious, strict, hypocritical zealots with too much prominence._

_There. “The map...you’ve seen it.”_

_He was going to get it._

“I never gave you anything!” Rey shouted.

Poe came back inside, talking to her with his back turned to Kylo. He could barely make it out. “Well…look...getting upset. Letting him get to you. Where is Leia?”

“She doesn’t want to see what a _creature_ her son has become,” Rey said, not whispering.

_“That’s what happens when you’re being hunted by a creature in a mask."_

“Stop it!” Rey shouted around Poe as he held her still, again attempting to calm her. But by now it was too late. She knew he was playing memories. His real memories. She didn’t know _how_ he was doing it or _when_ it had happened. But she was certainly embarrassed. Because he _had_ fucked her on the floor. And worse. But he’d save that for another day. 

Kylo’s stomach growled and he wished she’d hurry up and fuck off to his mother who couldn’t trouble herself to visit. A dismissal he was grateful for.

“I think that’s enough for the day, Rey,” Poe was saying, pushing her out and scowling back at Kylo.

“Fine,” she said, practically stomping out, her gauzy tabards fluttering. “Don’t tell Leia,” she ordered Poe as he followed her. He returned moments later to kick Kylo’s lunch across the cavern.

“ _Upset_?” He said, spitefully, as Kylo seethed. “Fuckin prick,” he grumbled, walking back to his designated position in the tunnel.

The cave smelt sharply now of Rey’s puke and the usual stale air. Kylo felt his cheekbone, swelling and tender. His stomach empty, the rest of him cold. A cold that had set in a long time ago. Perhaps even before his imprisonment. Space was cold. _He_ was cold.

He had to be. The more depraved he was, the more Snoke trusted him. He had grown to associate depravity with survival. To maintain his apprenticeship and impress on his only ally that he was trustworthy, capable. Sith.

And he _was_ capable. It wasn’t easy getting the timedoor. But he’d earned it. It was meant for him. The Oracle even said so. 

But all that did nothing to assure him. He had years of bad deeds and mistakes under his belt. Before he got a hold of the timedoor. Things he couldn’t change. 

_“Ben, no!” Master Luke bellowed._

It didn’t go back that far.

  
Vader would have known what to do. He was always two steps ahead of his enemies. A strategist. Kylo wasn’t like that yet. He faced things head on. He was _reactive_. Well, at least it had saved his life once, whatever he’d become now.


	3. The night so black that the darkness hummed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **When I awoke, the moon still hung  
>  The night so black that the darkness hummed  
> I raised myself, my legs were weak  
> I prayed my mind be good to me  
> The creature lunged  
> I turned and ran  
> To save a life I didn't have**
> 
> In The Woods Somewhere by Hozier
> 
> [The Spotify Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7etV4yydTasOAAkJU0sZgn?si=WjvyUemEQ1OvcWIiO_OBWw)

“How did it go?” Leia asked with trepidation, waiting for her on the camp side of the swinging bridge. She knew her son wasn’t going to be a picnic.

“Well. I can read him,” Rey said, vaguely, sourly, as she pulled her way up the last few feet by the cable railings.

“And?” Leia pressed as they walked side by side towards her ship.

“I have a hunch about the thing he took from Lothal. But I’ll keep digging,” Rey said, feigning a work ethic for the assignment she didn’t have.

She wanted to go back to her tent and hide. Kylo Ren _was_ the stuff of nightmares. And her hunch was that he had met her on a different _timeline_ and done horrible things. And the only reason she was going to dig was to find out _how_ he did that. And make sure he never did it again.

——————————

That night, she jolted in her cot, her hand flashing to her lightsaber under her pillow. She felt the ghost of a hunger pain that wasn’t hers. Raw wrists and sore muscles from the position of his arms. These were Kylo’s pains. Her abilities _were_ growing.

It was raining, but she had an idea, slipping on her boots and flipping her hood up over her hair, still loose over her shoulders.

She crept around the camp, darker from cloud cover, the sound of her steps hidden by the rain beating against the leaves overhead. The bridge was slippery and she clung to the rails, the grated, metal boards under her feet showing her gaps of rocky serf a hundred feet below, and the wind blowing the bridge at an odd angle.

The rest of the way to the caves was downhill through knee-high grasses. Kylo’s prison was Han’s idea. He knew about the Smuggler’s Caves and the hidden entrance—through a thin, pounding waterfall. 

She was already soaked, so she wasn’t too precious about the wet rocks and swirling mist that covered her hair in tiny, clinging drops. Beau was the lookout, helping her with a hand as she climbed through the opening and held a finger to her lips.

_Not a sound_ , her eyes told him and he motioned with his hand out flat as if to say ‘At your own risk.’ He knew she had a job to do.

The tunnels were a maze, but they had lit the right one with sappy torches. Rey didn’t know the second portly, young guard, but he recognized her under the white hood, looking very Jedi and important. She nodded to the side, a ‘get lost’ that he obeyed. 

Swallowing, she removed her boots and padded into the chamber. Kylo Ren couldn’t torment her if he was asleep. She couldn’t ‘pry’, that would wake him. But she might be able to answer Leia’s final question this way. Was there good in him?

He was on his side, facing the wall, and she got closer than yesterday, still out of reach. His silhouette was enormous, his broad shoulders the highest point. The thick robes he wore in battle had been removed before he was imprisoned. He looked like the stormtroopers, down to a loose sweater and black pants.

She lowered herself to sit in the silty dirt and _listened_ over the echoing rain.

_He was sleeping in a hut, bathed in blue light. A bearded man held a lightsaber in his hands. One prosthetic, one real._

Her saber. Luke Skywalker.

Kylo was a padawan, she could tell by the braid tucked behind his right ear.

Rey closed her eyes, reaching her hand out. Not to pry, just to steady the shaking visions that haunted Kylo Ren.

_He looked over his shoulder._

Rey’s eyes snapped open and this Kylo had turned to look at her, sensed her there in the quiet. Terrified, she fisted her hand over his consciousness and he was out, on his back now.

Breathing, heart pounding, she stood to go, but saw his bindings, remembering how painful they had felt. Keeping her distance, she tried to untangle them with the force, his arms raising in the air with her efforts. It was too complex. 

She watched his face, stepping within his reach, and grabbed at the knot, working frantically to loosen it and pull it apart. The fibrous rope fell to his chest but he didn’t wake, though his Adam’s Apple bobbed with a breath under his collar.

The skin was dirty, red, and gone in some places. Pulling her arm wraps off, she swathed both of his wrists, his arms heavy and limp, her fingers shaking.

She shouldn’t have cared if the ropes hurt. He deserved it. He killed innocent people. He raped her on some distant timeline. He was a monster. 

But if _she_ had to feel it, then it was like she was helping herself.

Ready to re-tie the rope over the bandages, she groped for it on his chest, but his hand moved, found hers and gripped it like a vise.

She froze. Just fear. Not the force.

His hands were free and he felt the wraps, stretched his shoulders and ripped her down by the hand still in his clutches. Her knee landed right on his stomach and he sat up, sliding it to the side.

It was scary and awkward, him not speaking, just under her in _that position_ that her body wasn’t objecting to. Because she had seen his nightmare. 

And nightmares don’t have nightmares.

If she learned nothing else, she knew that. Kylo Ren could fear. Kylo Ren had weaknesses. Maybe some good in him too.

“Thank you,” he said, shocking her.

She was going to say ‘You’re welcome’ out of habit, but his mouth was on hers in the dark and she squirmed—but not away. Their mouths opened and closed, his tongue on hers and his hands pressing her down _onto him_. Where he was hard and needy. 

She didn’t know where to put her hands, settling on his shoulders. Her body was humming, but she gasped for air and breathed in sense, attempting to squeeze out of his grasp. Just because it was pitch black, didn’t mean this wasn’t _real_ and _wrong_.

After a moment's hesitation, he let her go. He was strong and could have made her stay. She ran four steps and reached the entrance, wiping her mouth, but remembered his bindings.

Deciding to give him a chance, she walked slowly back to where he sat. 

“I have to re-tie you.”

He sighed, looking her down in the dimness, _wishing she’d come back for something else._ Because his pants were straining.

Rey ignored the thought, gathering the rope and waiting for him to stretch, as if he was going to willingly let her, just wanted to move. He groaned and she could feel the knots in his muscles, his hands swelling from a return of proper blood flow. And they weren’t the only part of his body experiencing that sensation.

Thank gods he couldn’t see her blush.

He held his hands out and she started tying him. His eyes were on her, not the ropes, but she paid attention to the task. 

“What’s that?” She asked, keeping the binding below his fancy watch, not like any she’d ever seen before. A pearly, blue face and white, etched runic symbols around the sides. No doubt one of his trophies.

“Ow,” he said when she pulled the ropes tight. Done.

She let his hands fall and stood, but he lunged, grabbing her trailing wrap dress.

“Ask me something and I’ll tell you,” he said, some pleading, dark, exchange in mind that made her ache between her legs.

_That_ wasn’t happening. But he didn’t know that.

She pulled her dress out of his hand, searching for the whites of his eyes to meet his gaze. “Did you really rape me?” She asked seriously.

“Yes,” he said, and she felt him _throb_ with pleasure at the memory.

_He waved his arm fast when he entered the room, slapping her across the cheek with an invisible hand. He shouted in her face, spitting and incoherent._

_“Doyouknowwhatyoualmostcostme? You fucking desert rat bitch!?” Kylo shouted, throwing his helmet to the wall._

_He was going to beat her black and blue and drag her to the emperor’s feet, like any other prisoner._

_Her chest heaved in fear and her body caught his eye._

_He slashed his arm again, this time knocking her out with a force sleep so hard her head snapped left and rolled across her collarbone._

“Why?” Rey said, taking in the situation. The rack. The room. 

_Kylo tore at the fabric of her dress, flimsy and airy, desert-wear. His gloved fingers raked her skin, leaving dull pink trails that would bruise, but he didn’t care._

“Revenge,” Kylo said.

_He threw her belts to the floor and released her from the restraints, lifting her—half-dressed and exposed—to lay her on the ground._

“What did I do?” Rey said, crying, ashamed of the event. Ashamed she kissed her attacker and showed him kindness.

_He ripped and pulled until she was bare, still somehow looking dignified. But he could fix that._

“You escaped,” Kylo said, his jaw working, still furious at the memory.

_He spread her knees and dipped his hips between her legs, pulling his glove off with his teeth to guide himself. But she wasn’t slick. And she was too small for his girth. Fuck._

_He thought about fucking her mouth. But he wanted to defile her. He sat, pulling off his other glove, detaching his cape, and unzipping his hot tunic, pulling it all off as if it had offended him too._

“Escaped _what_?” Rey said, backing away.

“That table,” he said, honestly, even though she wasn’t going to exchange his truthfulness for the thing he wanted. “The first time.”


	4. Can't endure, then you can't inhale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Recollect me darling, raise me to your lips  
>  Two undernourished egos, four rotating hips  
> Hold on to me tightly, I'm a sliding scale  
> Can't endure, then you can't inhale  
> Clearly  
> Out of body experience interferes  
> And dreams of flying, I fit  
> Nearly  
> Surrounds me, though I get lonely  
> Slowly**
> 
> Inertia Creeps by Massive Attack
> 
> [The Spotify Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7etV4yydTasOAAkJU0sZgn?si=WjvyUemEQ1OvcWIiO_OBWw)

Kylo gasped. The pain was unbearable.

_He rubbed his face, still sitting on the floor of the interrogation room. He pulled his boots off, throwing them hard at the most expensive-looking console wall._

_He had to come back. Even though he didn’t know how many uses the timedoor had. Could be one, could be infinite. If the girl had escaped, he would have been completely fucked. The droid had escaped. The Resistance pilot had escaped. FN2187 with him, taking a TIE fighter. But the emperor hadn’t asked to see them. He wanted to see her._

_He’d traveled back before that conversation, when Snoke took an interest in her, a new force user, capable of pushing him out of her mind. Because part of him was jealous. Kylo had the bloodline, the potential. And she was a sunburned, little, scavenger orphan who didn’t have the good sense to get off Jakku, and yet, she was strong in the force. And the emperor was intrigued. He might even seek to replace Kylo, with all of his failings stacking against him, his compliments few and far between these days. His displeasure frequent._

_He could change that outcome too, if he wanted. Kylo could still get the map out of her and go to him with good news, rather than excuses. Prove himself capable. Snoke didn’t need to know about her abilities. Kylo could take her to his quarters, keep her as a companion in a force collar._

_Looking back at her, unconscious, peaceful even, her hair still perfectly bunned, Kylo decided to become the creature hunting her through the forest. He’d wake her up at the end, scare the obstinacy out of her._

_Revenge. Torture. Get the map. Keep her. Kill Luke._

_Kylo palmed himself through his pants, watching her breath fog the floor near her mouth. He crawled between her legs, dipped and wet her with his mouth. She was soft. Tangy and sweet._

_Licking two fingers, he drove them into her, barely getting past the knuckles. This was going to take forever._

_Might as well enjoy it._

_He licked up her flat abdomen to her breast, cupping the other in his hand, gravity doing her no favors._

_His right hand slid up and down her, but that was boring. He used the force instead, buzzing and vibrating on her cunt so he could unzip and continue stroking himself._

_Straddling her on all fours, he sucked down her neck and chest, leaving marks. Tomorrow she’d look in the mirror and know he was everywhere._

_He saw her eyelids flutter and her mouth open._

_“You like that, little desert rat?” Kylo said into her neck, pressing the invisible vibrations harder into her sex._

_She made a noise and he watched to see if she would wake up, but he’d hit her with it hard. There was something hot about that second of feedback though. He thought about waking her up. But she’d scream the whole time. He was big._

_After a minute, her back arched and she made that noise again. Like a whine that made his cock stiffer. “Fuck,” he muttered, feeling her slickening, warmer, and his hips jerked, rutting into his own hand in anticipation, pre-cum dripping._

_He pulled his sweater and pants off and positioned himself, his knees sticking to the floor. Bucking his hips, he plunged in as far as he could go—not far—just past the tip where his shaft was thickest, but he gritted his teeth and pushed and filled her, tearing through the tight muscle. “Ugh,” he groaned into her hair. The grip was like a slippery fist around the base of his cock._

_Her legs moved and he watched her face while he pulled out and drove himself back in, over and over, just a few inches in either direction. Just friction._

_“Gods,” he cried, slowing down. He hadn’t had a woman in a while._

_Looking between them, he watched his cock bulge inside her and he pressed on it with his fist, just below her navel, watching her eyelids flutter again while his tip slid over that inner spot that made women come._

_He noticed a smear of blood on the top of his cock and felt bad for a moment. But she wasn’t aware, so what did it really matter?_

_Because she’ll feel it when she wakes up, he thought. But wasn’t that the whole point of this?_

_To terrorize her._

_He thrust harder, rougher, wanting her to wake up sore and sorry she ever fucked with him. But then his pleasure stalled out, his commitment to this punishment waning, and who the hells was he acting for?_

_Polishing his depraved soul for Snoke._

_Still breathing heavy, he found her mouth and kissed her, feeling his whole body ignite when his eyes were closed and he did what he really wanted. Which was wake her up._

_Her eyes opened and she bit down on his tongue. Ow. And he was right. She screamed in pain._

_He went back to Plan A._

_Terror._

_He covered her mouth with his palm, bottoming out inside her and circling his hips, flush with her pussy, grinding into her, his tip smashed against her limits inside. “You’ve got two options,” he spat, growing hot. Because her greenish eyes were locked on his, watering, and watching him hover over her. Why was that turning him on?_

_“You tell me about the map, or I come inside you,” he said, breathing heavily so she’d know her time was running out._

_She shrieked into his sweaty hand, shaking her head, her legs trying to leverage off the floor, but he was twice her weight._

_“The map,” he groaned, fucking close. Happening faster than he meant it to._

_He lifted his hand._

_“I only saw it for a second,” she sobbed, truthfully. She hadn’t recognized the system or memorized the route._

_Fuck. Kylo pulled out, pumping himself wherever. Her thigh, the floor, letting her sit up and slide away._

_She reached for her clothes, her wraps falling off her arms, and he grabbed a wrist, then the other when she tried to fight. “Why didn’t you just tell me that? When I was ripping apart your brain for nothing!”_

_“What?” She cried, afraid he was going to force himself on her again._

_Kylo forgot. On this timeline, he hadn’t gotten to the interrogation. The door opened and he slapped her awake. She’d been out since Takodana. No wonder she looked so confused. She didn’t even know who he was, hadn’t seen him take off his mask. She thought he was some kind of First Order inquisitor._

_He grabbed his shirt and pulled it over her, then picked her up and planted her back into the chair, restraining her wrists and ankles again, his shirt just long enough to keep her decent, but not enough to hide the come and blood on the inside of her thighs._

_“Who are you?” She asked his naked back, her voice wavering. Her accent was too rich for a desert rat._

_Pulling his pants on, he walked behind her to pick his helmet up. He slammed it down in the oily ashes of his incinerated victims, turning the visor to face her._

“Well, you had fun with me. Didn’t you,” Rey said, her tone flat, lowering her hand. 

He exhaled, the pain dissipating, drooling, cringing until the pressure was gone. It had taken her an hour to extract the first and second time he interrogated her. 

She had come in that afternoon with a fresh determination. An anger, after what he’d shown her in the dark. Tearing her clothes off, preparing to destroy her. 

He hoped she’d stop now. Hope she was satisfied. Because he could taste blood down the back of his throat and what came next was the worst part.

“Have to save something for tomorrow,” Rey said, looking numb, holding her hand under the water that was dripping from the stalactites, remnants from last night’s storm.

“You push any harder and you’ll kill me,” he said, struggling to remember how to breathe in and out.

“We’ll be even then, won’t we?” She said, looking away from the black walls of rock to meet his eyes.

_Fuck. She’d already seen it._

“Yeah,” she said, walking out. “Tomorrow you’ll show me what a murderer you are.”


	5. If I was you I'd be afraid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **If I was you I'd run  
>  If I was you I'd hide  
> If I was you I'd be afraid  
> Afraid of what's inside  
> Afraid of what's inside  
> I can hear your voice  
> I can feel you cry  
> No matter what you do now  
> Don't dare to close your eyes**
> 
> Inside by Chris Avantgarde, Red Rosamund
> 
> [The Spotify Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7etV4yydTasOAAkJU0sZgn?si=WjvyUemEQ1OvcWIiO_OBWw)

Rey hadn’t told Leia much. Just that the artifact Kylo had stolen from Lothal was capable of altering time. And that he’d used it. At least twice.

Then she informed Leia that there was no good in him. That she’d only seen fear and jealousy and brutality and Luke was right to consider killing him when he was young.

“You’re taking this too personally,” Leia responded, walking her to the bridge. “If he’s making you angry, I’ll- I’ll talk to him myself. You have to keep a cool head.”

“My head is cool,” Rey snapped, crossing the bridge on her own. She shouldn’t have disrespected Leia. But she didn’t know what Rey knew. Didn’t know about his interrogation methods. Didn’t know that on another timeline, Rey had died to protect her.

“Show me,” Rey ordered, raising her hand as soon as she had dismissed the guard, Poe again this morning. 

Kylo’s knees slid backwards across the cave floor with the force of her push.

_“All I need is that fucking droid. Where is the Resistance base?” Kylo said, stretching his hand out over her face, leaning in close._

_Rey struggled with the intrusion, trying to keep her face composed, but unable to stem the tears from pouring._

Kylo was resisting her, but she pushed, her hand shaking with the effort and he gasped, lowering his head against the pressure. He wasn’t expecting her to be like this. Cruel.

_“I’m not giving you...anything,” she said, choking down air._

_“You said that already,” Kylo hissed, his teeth almost touching her ear. He couldn’t go to Snoke with nothing. He couldn’t let Luke slip through his fingers. He placed his hand physically on her head, which was not advised. But fuck the Jedi rules._

Rey did the same, ran her fingers through Kylo’s hair and settled her palm on his forehead. He was crying, breathing through his mouth, the pressure on his skull impeding his breathing already.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said, sounding wet and stuffy. “I’ll just tell you,” he said, looking up at her with bloodshot eyes.

“I don’t need your help,” Rey whispered. He was a coward. He could dish it out to her, but couldn’t take it himself?

But he was just remembering, freely, now. 

_“Stop!” Rey screamed, her hands turning to fists under the restraints._

She pushed anyway. 

_“Just tell me,” Kylo insisted, still searching for mentions of his mother and the base. He was getting flashes of her on his father’s ship. He gave her the blaster. BB8 followed her around like a lost dog._

_“You’re a monster,” she said weakly. “She’s your mother.”_

_She was still somehow reading him. Like the first time, pushing back, trying to force him out. She hadn’t known until now that Leia was his mother or that Han was his father. Because his father didn’t bother to mention it. Probably ashamed._

_He lifted his hand off her face and unraveled her arm wrap, stuffing it into her mouth. “I don’t need your mouth to read you.”_

_He put both hands on her either side of her head and she cringed, too much pain to scream._

_She could understand the droid’s squeaky language. “The Ileenium System?” She said to ‘Finn’, previously FN2187._

_The Ileenium System._ _D’Qar. The base was on D’Qar. One of the Outer Rim territories. Kylo grinned._

_When he let go of Rey’s head, she exhaled and passed out. He started picking up his clothes, pulling on his tunic and gloves.  
_

_The weapon was almost ready. Starkiller. They had destroyed the Republic first, the Senate’s fleet. But they could wipe out the rebels after it charged. D’Qar, Takodana. He’d go tell Snoke. He’ll be so impressed._

_What was he going to do about Rey, though? Should he dress her back in Jakku’s finest and carry her to his quarters? He had to do it himself, she could escape again. He snapped his fingers to force wake her but she didn’t move._

_Blood was pooling in her ears._

_“Rey,” he said aloud. Felt weird saying her name._

_He removed her restraints and picked her up, laying her on the floor, unclogging her mouth. She probably needed the medical bay. He’d pushed too hard. Her head rolled to the side._

_And there was no little cloud of breath forming on the floor near her mouth._

_“Hey!” He shouted, hovering a hand over her, searching for her life force. But she was gone. Maybe if he’d noticed her faster, instead of preparing himself to see Snoke. “Fuck!” he shouted, looking around._

_It wasn’t like he hadn’t killed a dozen people in that room before. But not once by accident. It almost would have been better if he hadn’t even gone back in time in the first place._

_Idiot. He had the timedoor, that’s what he’d do. Just go back to when she was alive, drag her to Snoke and present him with his new force-using pet and the Resistance base._

_He rolled back his sleeve and turned the blue face. How many hours? He wanted to go back before the rape. That was a mistake. He guessed and pushed down on the face until it clicked, feeling himself fall, right through the floor, his feet landing on moss._

_Where the fuck. Oh, too far. Back on Takodana. He was the creature chasing Rey through the forest._

Rey removed her hand from his head, looking down at his ‘fancy watch’. _It was here the whole time._

Kylo’s nose was pouring blood. _Oh, shit._

She caught him as he fell sideways and laid him on his back, but then he started choking on the blood. Climbing around him, she sat him up, “Poe! Go get medical!” She shouted. But he was at the entrance with Snap and probably didn’t hear her. 

Kylo’s head fell backwards onto her shoulder and she propped it back up. “I’m sorry,” she said, wondering if he could hear her. “I thought you killed me on purpose.” 

Closing her eyes, she put her hands on his temples and tried to breathe evenly. She’d never force healed before. But she had plenty of life force. She was healthy and fear was pumping oxygen to her blood and within seconds it was working. Her hands started to hurt, cramping up. But he swallowed and was sitting up on his own. She didn’t let go until his muscles stopped hurting and the skin on his wrists had healed and his body felt good again, not emaciated, muscled and strong. 

“That’s enough,” he said, pulling her hands away. She felt dizzy and he pulled her into his lap. 

“That’s enough,” he said again, his hands still bound, but he lifted his arms and encircled her. 

She could read his mind. He was glad she was back to her old self. Cruelty suited her, but not directed at him. He wasn’t a real threat to her anymore.

“You had the timedoor on when I took off your bindings,” Rey said, touching it carefully. “Did it run out of uses?” 

Kylo swallowed again, looking at it too. “I don’t know. I didn’t try.”

“Why not?” Rey asked. He’d been starved and bound for months. That was his one opportunity.

_Because you kissed me,_ he thought.

Rey heard Poe’s footsteps echoing down the tunnel and she wormed out of Kylo’s arms, wiping his bloody face off on her wraps.

“Everything okay?” Poe asked, looking at Kylo. “Does he look bigger to you?” He said, almost joking. But his change was noticeable. His hair was full, not lank, and his broad chest and thighs pulled his clothes tight. 

At least Poe didn’t say _she_ looked drained. She felt like she needed a nap and a hot meal. Trying to walk normally, she slowly made her way towards the tunnel. 

“Get him a cot,” Rey said, loud enough that Kylo could hear her.


	6. If it can be broke then it can be fixed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **If it can be broke then it can be fixed  
>  If it can be fused then it can be split  
> It's all under control  
> If it can be lost then it can be won  
> If it can be touched then it can be turned  
> All you need is time**
> 
> Pioneers - M83 Remix by Bloc Party
> 
> [The Spotify Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7etV4yydTasOAAkJU0sZgn?si=WjvyUemEQ1OvcWIiO_OBWw)

A week went by with no visits from Rey. But he could feel her. Still there, on Takodana. When she was training and frustrated. When they drank around the fire. When she tried to unfuse stubborn parts of BB8. When she laid in her cot and thought of him. _Hate_ and _curiosity_ is how he’d describe her sentiments. He focused on the curiosity.

The guards didn’t add any dirt seasoning to his food anymore. She’d told them not to do that. And he had a cot now. Small. His feet hung off the end. But he could sleep comfortably, no cold ground leeching his heat.

He was starting to worry about his bindings, though. Rey had tied some sort of repelling knot that didn’t allow for much adjustments. And when she force healed him, and his muscle mass returned, shit, it was all he could do to keep his hands from turning blue. 

No one else would come near him, though, except the old lady with the water and towels. But they didn’t allow her to do that sort of thing.

He hated asking Rey for help, after what she’d seen. After she’d already given him a cot. 

It was night and he couldn’t see what color his hands were now, but they looked darker than his arms. “Fuck.”

He closed his eyes, focusing on her life force, a mile away at least. “Rey.”

He was expecting it to work like a summons, like a ‘can you come here?’ But her abilities were so much stronger than that. 

“Kylo?” She said, and he heard it, as if she was next to him in the dark.

He looked—even though that was stupid—but he really did see her. It was like she was standing next to his cot.

“How’d you do that?” She said, looking down at him, wearing fewer layers than usual. Just an undershirt and pants, lit by a light somewhere. Maybe a lantern. Had he woken her?

“I didn’t mean to do _this_ ,” he said, sitting up. “And I’ve got the collar. Are you sure _you’re_ not doing it?” _You’re the little force prodigy._

“Well, thank you for that, but I’m not- what’s wrong with your hands?” She said, kneeling down, unafraid to touch him, be near him. Then again, she could snuff him to sleep whenever she wanted, so.

“Your knots were a little tight,” he said, but he didn’t need to convince her, she was already pulling at them. 

“This isn’t some trick to hit your time thingy?” She asked, but all he could think about was how her elbow was touching his leg. She lifted it off, reading his mind. “You have the worst one-track mind I’ve ever seen.”

“You haven’t read many men then,” Kylo said in his defense. “Ah,” he sighed when his hands were free. But then the blood rushed in and it hurt. 

He stretched, wishing he had more time, then held his hands out again, leaving her old wraps on. They kept the ropes from rubbing.

Rey was watching him. “Stretch. I don’t care. I’ll babysit you.” She took a step back and sat on a rock, but quickly, as if maybe she was really sitting on a soft cot.

He grinned, pulling an arm behind his back to relieve the aches, then the other one. His hands still hurt, pinpricks and swelling. Rey reached out and grabbed them.

“You don’t have to,” he said, when he realized she was going to force heal him again. They’d recover in a few minutes.

She was already closing her eyes and breathing slow. “It’s good practice. And it was my fault.” 

Her hand was so small over his, one on top and the other underneath the two. The pain was going away but he was watching her face, only a foot away from his.

“Stop it,” she said, not opening her eyes. He looked away. Even though he was in a dark cave and there was nothing to look at. He could listen though. Finn snoring in the tunnel.

Rey was done, standing up to shake her own hands while he continued twisting and stretching. “Thank you. Again.”

“You’re lucky I can read you and tell you’re not in the mood for carnage,” Rey said, sitting back down on her rock/cot. “Maybe if you’re good, I’ll give your arms a break every night,” she offered.

“What, is this like a truce?” Kylo asked, his eyebrow raising. Free hands and Rey every night. _Don’t make it dirty,_ he told himself.

“You just did,” she laughed, overhearing him try to think less like a man. “No, not a truce. Because I still hate you. But if you refuse to hit that button and leave, you might as well be comfortable sometimes.”

“You’re not scared of me?” He asked, because he really was shocked that she’d seen the worst of him and was able to laugh. And everyone was scared of him.

She shrugged. “If you wanted me dead, you wouldn’t have come back. If you wanted to rape me, you would have done it the night we. _You_ kissed me,” she corrected herself. 

He’d give anything to read her mind without cotton ball ears. Foggy thoughts of what she did throughout the day was all he got. Remnants of her abilities.

“I’m _not_ taking it off,” she told him, meaning his force collar.

He worried about her ability to hear everything. Mainly his fear…

“I’m not touching your watch,” she said, looking at it. “Some Oracle said it was meant for you.”

_Who gives a shit? It has the ability to alter the fate of the universe and she didn’t want to give it to the underdog Resistance?_

She shrugged. “I’m just a little desert rat. Right? What do I know?” 

Her hair was down again. She had highlights at the front, the part that was on top when her hair was up, the part the sun hit all day. She didn’t look like a rat. And he was the one who lived in a hole.

Rey smirked. “What did this _Oracle_ say to you?” She asked, and he felt the familiar pull of her curiosity. “Was he good or bad?”

“The Oracles don’t serve light or dark,” Kylo corrected her thinking. “They’re parasites that feed off the life force of other creatures, no other sustenance. It makes them tuned into everything the force has planned. And they get off spoiling everything.”

Rey smiled like a kid hearing a campfire tale. “What did it say to you though? What was the spoil?”

“Told me to go to Lothal and pass the Jedi test I never took. Said there I’d find the thing that would make me appreciate _time_ ,” Kylo said, remembering. _It wasn’t what I went to the Oracle for at all._

Rey tilted her head. A prod.

“I was. Am,” he said. _Conflicted_ , he thought. In fact. He could never remember a time before he was conflicted. He was like the Oracles, not at home on either side. But he’d destroy life left and right if it meant he survived.

“It’s more than that though,” Rey said, shaking her head. “You wanted power, you want to be idolized. You want to be _Darth Vader_.” She said it so flippantly, his hands turned to fists.

She glanced down at his hands on his thighs and held the rope up. “Do I need to tie you back up already?” 

_No_ , he thought, relaxing his hands. “But watch your mouth about my grandfather.”

“The whole galaxy hated him. I don’t see why I should be any different,” Rey said, baiting him. A test.

“He was the Supreme Commander of the Imperial Military. When he was 25. They still teach his tactics, just under a false name,” he said. His name might be mud, but his intelligence lived on.

Rey yawned, unimpressed. 

She was one of those day-dreamy country-types who idolized the tales of rebels like his mother, father, _uncle_.

“Well, they were fighting to protect their rights, not destroy planets!” Rey said, angry now. She was so defensive of his parents.

“You have the best parents in the galaxy,” Rey said, grabbing his hands and tying him again. “You had the easiest start in life. Why didn’t the Oracle give you something to appreciate _that_?”

She finished tying him and they sat silently, stewing for a moment. 

He should go. He could probably just stop thinking about her for two seconds and end it. “Should I still-.”

“Yeah, come back tomorrow,” she said, annoyed, waving a hand and he was alone, listening to Finn’s fucking snores.


	7. Cause we can give it time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **And I can draw the line on the first day  
>  I'll let you cross it  
> Let you take every line I've got  
> When the time gets late  
> But if stars shouldn't shine  
> By the very first time  
> Then dear it's fine, so fine by me  
> Cause we can give it time  
> So much time with me**
> 
> Stars by The XX
> 
> [The Spotify Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7etV4yydTasOAAkJU0sZgn?si=WjvyUemEQ1OvcWIiO_OBWw)

“Where are you right now?” Kylo asked, watching her hair blow. He folded his long legs to sit next to her, facing the same direction, as if he could see what she was seeing.

She was in the tall grass, on his side of the cliffs, watching the lanterns of the encampment gutter out one by one. She didn’t want to be in her tent when Kylo arrived. People would think she was talking to herself.

“The cliff,” she said, reaching over and untying him, reading him for any devious plans but seeing only gratitude. 

He unwound his wrists of the loose rope and wraps, letting the skin breathe. 

“How’s training going?” He asked, conversationally, dying for information, bored out of his mind in the caves. She heard a rustling, his heavy ankle chain that trailed into nothingness. His black boots were as long as her forearm.

It was growing colder, so Rey pulled her hood up. “I’d show you what I can do with a saber, but I like to keep weapons far away from you.” 

“I didn’t even know my mother knew how to train someone,” he admitted.

“You underestimate her,” Rey said. 

Leia finished her Jedi training under Master Luke, but decided against it for some reason. Maybe it was Han. She loved him, completely adored him. And back then—when there were other Jedi and rules—they weren’t supposed to have attachments like that. She had ‘Ben’ a year later.

“Maybe. You’ve spent more time with her than I have, so. Maybe,” Kylo said, remembering half his childhood spent waiting on Chandrila for one parent or the other to return from a smuggling adventure or Resistance planning.

It seemed like a lot of alone time. Not so unlike her childhood on Jakku. Always waiting. Counting days on the wall until they were just decoration. Patterns that meant nothing.

“Why did you destroy the Jedi temple?” Rey asked. That had been bugging her. It would have been so much less lonely to train with others.

“Which one?” He asked, like it was funny, the havoc he left in his wake. 

“The Academy,” Rey clarified. The one where he killed the other students and everyone started calling him The Jedi Killer.

“I didn’t. I blew up my hut. Snoke did the rest,” Kylo said. He was thinking that some of them were his friends. And most of them too young to hold a lightsaber. 

He wasn’t lying. But _everyone_ thought he’d done it. Leia would be excited to know this.

“If you didn’t like that he did it, you shouldn’t have followed him,” Rey said.

“My _grandfather_ spoke to me that night. Through the force. _Told_ me to trust him. And Snoke saw me for what I am and not because of my parents. _Despite_ my parents,” Kylo said, his voice growing louder. 

He stopped and turned, talking to someone. His guard. Rey waited, watching him play it off. 

Kylo smirked as he watched the guard return to his station.

“Thinks I’m losing my mind,” he whispered.

Rey smiled, stretching her legs out. 

Her legs were _barely spread_ and she felt a pang of lust from Kylo.

“Ugh,” she groaned, laying back in the grass. “Can you stop thinking about me like that?”

His jaw tightened and he ran a hand through his hair. “Do you read all your friends like this?”

Rey sat back up. “We’re. Not. Friends,” she said, viciously, finding his eyes. “You’re here because you're a prisoner and pitiful and if your hands are always tied they’re going to turn blue and fall off.”

He was looking at her lips now. 

“Stop that!”

“You first,” he said, softly, alert. Because she was staring at his mouth too. 

He touched her chin and she knew he was going to do it, but she let him anyway. His lips connected with hers so hard her hood fell back, his arms wrapping around her neck and back, sliding her closer. 

She made a little noise when his tongue went in her mouth and he paused. Recognizing it. From the floor of the interrogation room.

Rey leaned away, angry that he kissed her. Angry that he stopped. “Don’t _ever_ do that again,” she said, deadly serious.

He reached and pulled her hood back up over her hair. “Is it raining?” _You feel wet._

“A little bit,” Rey said, sliding further away. His thoughts weren’t even dirty that time.

“Listen, if this is going to work, you can’t touch me. And try not to think about touching me,” she said, laying out the ground rules. 

_You kissed me back. Again._

“No, I didn’t,” she lied, grabbing a clump of grass and throwing it in his face. _Pompous ass._

He laughed, pulling at his shirt and hair. “What is this? Grass?” He didn’t know they could transfer things through the connection.

It started raining in earnest so she grabbed his ropes and wraps and continued their nightly ritual of binding and unbinding, his hands cupping under hers as they worked, filling with drops of water, breathing in the smell of fresh rain.

————————————-

For two weeks, Kylo respected her line in the proverbial sand, keeping his hands and parts to himself. His thoughts were a different story. Worse, if anything. His one-track mind. It would almost be endearing, or flattering, if she didn’t know him better.

Sometimes she’d see something or hear something amusing and find herself filing it away to tell Kylo that night. Nothing important. Just stupid little things. Finn trying to learn Wookie. Poe striking out with girls. 

She decided to visit him in person. She kept supplying Leia with information and Leia couldn’t understand how she was _getting_ it, because she spent all day training, her off hours tinkering on BB8.

Leia was nowhere to be found—and Rey wanted to be seen going to _interrogate_ —only to run into her coming back across the bridge, towards the encampment.

“Did you visit him?” Rey asked. Leia hadn’t mentioned it.

“Oh, no,” Leia said. “Just talking to Beau about the guards. He thinks they’re getting tired of Ben. They’d rather be off fighting. Instead of prison duty. For a man they hate. The First Order has broken quite a few families.”

Rey was worried about the same. When they drank around the fire, the guards complained. Made threats.

“Let me know what you find out,” Leia said, sadly. Caught between her Resistance family and her real son.

“I don’t think he’s all bad,” Rey confessed, to cheer her.

“I know he’s not,” Leia smiled. “But it’s good to hear it.”

Beau was the lookout, but she didn’t know the guard. He looked surprised to see her, holding his arm out to stop her. “He’s-.”

“I’m allowed to see him,” she cut him off, shoving past.

She’d forgotten how small his cavern was. _Oh, fuck._ Kylo was half naked. Washing. He had his shirt off, pulled down to his wrists where he was soaping it in a deep bucket of water. So much skin. His chest was huge, his hair wet, hanging over his eyes.

“Do you mind?” He grinned, repeating her from the first day.

“Yeah, sorry.” She spun back around and the guard was laughing at her in the tunnel, an ‘I tried to tell you’ kind of laugh, even though he could have stopped her if he’d really tried.

  
“I’ll come back tomorrow,” she told Beau at the entrance, her face hot.

She’d seen Kylo wear less, in his memories. But real life was different. _Her_ timeline.


	8. We'll see the past repeat itself until the end

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **They try to hold me back to hide the fact that I'm a threat  
>  My mind's the truth behind the lies and I define what they regret  
> And fact the matter is it isn't yet a promise till it's kept  
> And honestly, we'll see the past repeat itself until the end**
> 
> Extinction by Killstation
> 
> [The Spotify Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7etV4yydTasOAAkJU0sZgn?si=WjvyUemEQ1OvcWIiO_OBWw)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sliiiiiightly short chapter. Cause I want to get to THE NEXT ONE.
> 
> Might not be able to publish Ch. 9 til Sunday though. Going on a transport trip to save a pig, a goat, and two roosters. :D

“Stop fussing,” Kylo told himself, fixing his hair. The old woman had cut it for him. Back to its original length, long enough to cover his ears, not so long it touched his shoulders. 

It was dark and Rey was late. She was at the fire. They did that once a week, to unwind. 

He heard a noise, footsteps coming down the tunnel. Poe was standing guard and he was fighting with someone. Multiple people, actually. 

“Hey,” Rey said, behind him. “Sorry about earlier,” she said, but he hushed her so he could listen. 

“No!” Poe was shouting, someone holding him back, others coming into his cavern. Five of them. His kill listers. Coming to beat him to the punch. It was inevitable. They couldn't spend every day in the calm presence of someone they despised. Not when he was simultaneously a threat and an easy target.

“What is it?” Rey asked, behind him still, unable to see anyone but him, tensed, preparing.

“How fast can you get here?” He asked, letting her read his mind. Five against one and he was bound and chained, unarmed, and couldn’t use the force.

They spread out.

Rey reached up—without a second thought—and entered the code to detach his force collar. Just like that. The collar slid down his chest and hit the ground with a dull thud, his assailants taking a step back, looking at each other.

It felt like he’d been breathing with one lung and suddenly had two. 

“Four minutes,” she said, and she was gone. On her way.

Someone raised a blaster and he ducked behind a rock, barely missing the red bolts, sparking off the walls, knocking over his bucket of water, ricocheting. Poe was shouting, apparently whoever was on lookout was in on it.

Kylo was rusty, but he ducked a bolt and lunged, hitting the shooter over the side of his neck with his forearms—still bound—dropping him in one blow. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he threw his limp body into his neighbor. 

He reached for the next, but his ankle chain stopped him, rattling and taut between his right leg and the rock it was fixed to. His short radius of territory.

The man laughed, but Kylo force-pulled him, feet dragging, into his open hands, his laugh catching in his throat. Kylo lifted him in the air by the front of his shirt, then pushed him down to land hard on the flat of his back.

_Gods,_ he’d missed having this power. Being unnaturally strong, fast, knowing what his opponent was going to do before they did it—like one second of premonition—feeling the waves radiate off him when he was incensed. 

Another fighter pulled a blaster out of the back of his pants, firing, but Kylo used the bolt, holding his hands up, letting it burn through his rope bindings on it’s voyage, then flexed, pulling his arms apart to break the last few strings. 

He raised his arm, his fingers held like a pinch, choking the man with the ray gun, just pressure, right on the verge of crushing his windpipe. Kylo used his free hand to physically pull the small blaster out of his grip—hard enough to dislocate the man’s arm—before tossing it to the floor like a toy he didn’t need. The man clawed at his own throat with his one working arm as his heels left the ground.

Kylo had been good so far. He’d kept his attackers in the ‘injure only’ category. The old Kylo would have lifted him in the air and dropped him on a stalagmite. He could have suffocated them with the musty dirt they put in his food. Stuff their throats with it. Watch them turn purple.

But it felt wrong to kill them outright. Rey was coming. And the bodies would scare her.

There was one left, running for the exit, but Kylo had two hands. He reached out, grabbing the last one with the force and throwing him so hard he knocked over the one he was choking.

Poe was still grappling with someone in the hall. Tired of waiting for Poe to take care of business, he force-pulled them into the cavern. 

_Oh, two guys, one on each arm._

Kylo pulled Poe forward at the same time he pushed them back to smack their heads into the wall. 

Poe regained his footing, then looked behind him, and around, baffled.

“Thanks, bud,” Poe said, out of breath, noticing Kylo’s collar was gone. “Did I ever apologize for punching you?” He joked.

Kylo raised a hand, smirking-

“And kicking your food-.”

-and snuffed his consciousness, using the force to slow his fall. He had keys on his belt and Kylo summoned them into his hand, finding the one that looked chunky, like his ankle chain, then twisted it in the lock, separated the pieces, and pulled his boot free.

Rey ran in, breathing hard, Luke’s blue saber drawn, lighting up the scene: Kylo, free of restraints, and eight bodies, the ground barely visible, so many of them in the small space.

“They’re alive,” he said, reading her worried thoughts.

She wasn’t used to that. Him reading _her._

But she was so relieved and he was feeling the truth behind her lies all at once. That she cared about him. _Her nightmare._

“Thank you,” she said, sounding a little drunk from her night at the fire. 

_For not killing them,_ she thought, extinguishing her lightsaber.

Kylo was tired of waiting for her to forgive him. There was no punishment bad enough for what he’d done. All his crimes, but mainly those that hurt her. She was just going to have to love him the way that he was.

He closed the distance, lifting her and pressing her to the wall, his hips between her legs. 

The force collar clamped around his neck, locking. Rey had summoned it, still not trusting him. His air thinned, his strength back to normal, Rey’s scared, surprised, excited thoughts disappeared.

“Whatever makes you comfortable,” he said, allowing it. He hunched, finding her mouth, already opened slightly, waiting for him.

His hands slid down her hips to her ass and he carried her, her legs wrapping around his waist, down the tunnel, into the labyrinth.


	9. The only thing worth knowing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Maybe there is something that you know that I don't  
>  We adopt a brand new language  
> Communicate through pursed lips  
> To make you feel you're with someone  
> Who deserves to be with you  
> But there's one thing we've got going  
> And it's the only thing worth knowing  
> It's got lots to do with magnets and the pull of the moon**
> 
> Poke by Daughter (Frightened Rabbit cover)
> 
> [The Spotify Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7etV4yydTasOAAkJU0sZgn?si=WjvyUemEQ1OvcWIiO_OBWw)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This soooooong. 
> 
> 1\. I love Frightened Rabbit.  
> 2\. I love Daughter.  
> 3\. It's so sad bc the lead singer of Frightened Rabbit killed himself and I loved him and only got to see him live once and I wanted like fifty more albums because his songs make me feel like I'm off having sex in a pub in Scotland or something. 
> 
> Sorry for the delay in the chapter update. Was on a rescue trip: https://www.tiktok.com/@cointoyourwitcher7/video/6866701096576896262?lang=en

Kylo worked his way through the abandoned cave tunnels, carrying her like his prize, rough, still on a high from the fight.

Rey was trying to quiet her thoughts so she could read his intentions. 

He was thinking about what she had just done. Trusted him, removed his collar and betrayed her fellow Resistance fighters. He was wondering if she was just drunk. Or if she liked him half as much as he liked her.

Honestly, Rey didn’t know _what_ she was doing. She felt on edge, unsure if she trusted him to _go further_. But he wasn’t thinking of her like that yet. It was there, in the back, coming. Not yet though. He just wanted to be with her. Away from everyone. Deep and far. Away. _His only friend._

The thought struck her as sad. Too often she hadn’t noticed his genuine responses to her, the power of a touch, a kind act, a listening ear. 

They passed crates of Bespin Port. The Resistance had found hordes of goods months ago when they were choosing a ‘cell’ for Kylo. She was smuggling several deep swallows in her stomach and they had given her courage. To latch onto what she wanted and let him take her into the darkness.

But now he was going too far into the caves, too many confusing turns and the tunnel ceiling so low he had to bend over. 

“That’s enough,” she whispered, pulling her leg out of his grasp and down to the floor.

He was going to talk to her, but she didn’t need to hear it. She groped for his face in the dark and planted her lips on his, feeling his surprise, his warm arms wrapping around her—not out of want, but out of empathy for her, trembling with nerves.

Leia said Lothal was supposed to have caves that portalized the World Between Worlds. Where Jedi could walk from one connected planet to another, through space or time. It was so dark, they could be anywhere, in a cave on any planet in the universe. 

Kylo’s mouth was becoming more insistent and she didn’t fear, but relished it, guiding him to the cold floor with her. Over her. Silent permission.

His hand pressed up her leg and firmly over her sex—through her pants—his confidence enough to melt her to the floor. When he realized she wasn’t going to stop him, his tongue moved on hers harder and he was definitely thinking about it now, romanticized images of her body running through his mind. Her young breasts and flat abdomen and sweet-tasting cunt.

She clenched, feeling one strong finger press deeper than the rest, mimicking his thoughts, up and down slowly between her legs. 

He felt her wetness through the fabric and she felt his body _reacting_ , followed by a deep groan into her mouth. Lust clouded his thoughts. Baser instincts as desperate as his fight for survival. A language of its own, one spoken through grasping and breathing and heat.

Rey found the top of his pants and ran her fingers along the waistline until she found a button, then another, lower and lower, her knuckles grazing _him_. Hard. And aching from months of abstinence.

While she struggled to work her skin-tight leggings over her hips, Kylo’s hand retreated to her breast, under her shirt, cupping it and swiping a thumb across in a squeeze that made her arch into his enormous hand, big enough to span from her lower ribs to her collarbone.

She kicked her shoes and pants off and Kylo kneed between her legs, feeling so much more at home in the motions than she was. 

He reached for himself and Rey’s pulse spiked.

“Don’t come inside me,” she said quickly, remembering that he had wanted to. Before.

Kylo’s hand fell back to the ground and he hovered over her in the dark. “Can’t you read my mind, little desert rat?” He said, a jest. Because he loved her and wouldn’t do that. Was planning to use the force somehow as prevention.

“I wasn’t sure,” she said, barely able to see his outline in the darkness. She was pretty sure the only reason she could even see that was with force assistance.

“I’m yours,” he said, sinking closer to her face until she felt the warmth of his chest. “I’ll do _anything_ you want,” he said, just grateful to have her in his grasp.

“Then keep going,” she said, “But slow.”

He kissed her neck, mouth open and wet, touching her down there with his hand, taking his time, enjoying every second, making her swollen and the feeling in her start to burn and grow urgent.

_Faster?_ He asked through the connection.

“Yes,” she breathed, instantly rewarded. Her legs spread wider and he jerked with need, but continued his ministrations, his expert fingers rubbing her clit with her own slick, dipping into her pussy to shock her, to wet his fingers and satisfy his urge to have _something_ inside her.

Rey cried out—not a word, just an encouragement—and he clamped his other hand over her mouth, fearful of discovery. “Shhh, I don’t want company,” he explained, unnecessarily.

She sobbed into his palm when it hit. Sweet and wonderful and embarrassing, tearing through her and leaving her even more desperate, wanting to go again. A hundred times.

He lifted his hand from her mouth and reached for his pants, incapable of waiting any longer, pulling himself out and rubbing his tip down her slit. He pressed into her, into her, into her, claiming her body a second time on a second timeline.

_Fuck_ , he thought, feeling her hot slick around him, tight but yielding with need. _Rey._

Suddenly, he reached for her lightsaber and ignited it and she almost screamed, but he just wanted the light. He wanted to see her. 

Kylo set it down an arm’s length away and curved his hips into her, “Look at me.” He wanted her eyes. Wanted to read her too, if not her mind, then at least her expressions as he rolled into her, biting his lip in restraint, still trying to go slow. For her.

“Faster,” she ordered him.

He licked his lips in the blue light and his eyes blinked hard as the friction increased, his hip bones pounding into her thighs, the erotic sound threatening to overpower his plans and end their tryst too quickly.

He was _big_ , just like in his memories, but Rey didn’t think she was torn or bleeding. But that left her with a stretching feeling that was so intense it could have been called painful. She wanted to communicate that somehow. Kylo wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between her building pleasure and the fear that he was going to make one wrong movement that would tear her and break the spell. 

She didn’t want to talk. She liked the language they were using. So she reached up and entered in the code, hearing the collar detach with a clank, and Kylo take a deep breath.

Her thoughts flooded him and he kissed her, angling himself more carefully, his cock throbbing inside her, sliding out less, digging into her front wall more. _Perfect._

She gasped when he squeezed her breasts too hard, unaware that they were so tender, and he read it, sucking them in apology. She still had his collar in her fist, but as she neared a peak, she knew she’d made a smart decision and let it fall from her hand.

Kylo smirked, reading her approval, and he rubbed a thumb over her bottom lip before kissing it. 

Rey turned her head into his hand, sucking on his fingers—that tasted like her—because she was close and she was squirming and needy and wanted him _everywhere_ inside her, wanted his marks on her so she’d see them tomorrow and his seed on her legs. Wanted him to come on her, dignity be damned, feel what she was feeling, travel to this place with her.

His eyes rolled up and closed, feeling her tongue lap at his fingers, swallowing his long digits until they neared the back of her throat, then sucked as she laid her head back down in the dirt.

Kylo’s hand lined her jaw as he groaned, racing her to the finish, but she was faster. She cried out—that whiney sound that drove him wild—and he didn’t muffle her, wanting to hear her pleasure. Her walls constricted around his cock as she came, and he made a pained sound, pulling out—despite himself—and pumped his shaft, spilling all over her clean, toned stomach.

His hand was sticky and he leaned back onto his heels, wiping it on the inside of his shirt to hide the evidence, before forcing his swollen cock back inside his pants. Still breathing hard, he was glancing at her in the blue light, as if he shouldn’t be looking at her. Taken too much of her. Splayed, covered in his pools and flecks of milky-white come. He was memorizing her.

His one-track mind.

Rey slid her fingertips over her breasts and down her middle, trailing through his spend, down between her legs, touching where she was still impossibly slick and sensitive. She waited for his eyes to look up, away from her cunt, finding hers. Wondering what she was doing.

  
 _Come back,_ she thought. They could return to the world later, be enemies another day. Right here, right now, they had time.


	10. I made a mistake I can’t take back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **What is left for you my dear  
>  These nothing words were yours my dear  
> Why can’t I move backwards please  
> I made a mistake I can’t take back  
> Why can’t I move backwards please  
> I made a mistake I can’t take back**
> 
> Collapse by Blackbird Blackbird
> 
> [The Spotify Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7etV4yydTasOAAkJU0sZgn?si=WjvyUemEQ1OvcWIiO_OBWw)

Kylo collapsed, completely spent. He put himself away as Rey wriggled back into her pants. Reaching, he extinguished her saber to give her some privacy. While she cleaned up and he brought his thoughts back to their current predicament.

It could go three ways. She with him or him with her. Or neither.

Poe was there, he’d probably vouch for him. The kill listers were disobeying orders and he was defending himself. Maybe if he just let Rey do the talking. Convince them to let him out of the caves on probation, with Rey to mind him. Until one day when he wouldn’t be.

Or.

He could convince her that her place was with him. Jedi or Sith, it didn’t matter. They were both religions on their way out. He wouldn’t make her do anything she didn’t want to do. But, if, in time she wanted to be given a title or position, he could help with that.

Or.

They could steal a ship. Them against the universe.

Rey was worrying about something else. She liked his ability to read her mind _during,_ but it was a risk now. She knew things.

“Like what?” Kylo asked.

_Fuck_ , she thought. “I’m not used to that,” she confessed. “Don’t know if I like it.”

“Having you in here doesn’t bother _me_ anymore,” he said, pointing to his head—even though she couldn't see him—and laying down closer.

She curled up against his chest, laying her head on his arm. _Don’t think about it,_ she told herself.

Which only made her think about it more. Kylo could see her breaking apart a chunk of BB8 a week ago, pulling out a little drive with the piece of the map to Luke Skywalker. Putting it in her clothes drawer. Because she didn’t want to leave Takodana yet. Because Kylo needed her.

He pulled her close and she knew he’d read it. But he wasn’t rushing off to nab it and steal a ship. 

“What else?” He asked, trying to sound unphased. Untempted.

“You’ll be pissed,” Rey said, remembering. The Resistance had blown up Starkiller Base with the help of Chewie and his father.

He exhaled through his nose, his mouth growing tight. He was pissed. But not for the loss of Hux’s weapon. Because his fabled father had _another_ historic victory under his belt. 

Rey repositioned, more uncomfortable with his thoughts than with their cold, hard, tunnel hideout. She liked Han. He was like the father she never had. 

Kylo bit back his response. A repetitive loop. The same argument as his original timeline. The top ruin on the watch’s face. He knew because the hand moved once for his angry return to the interrogation room and jumped again when he came back to Takodana.

He felt a tendril of consciousness. Why was Rey prying?

_Oh, shit._ He sat up. _It wasn’t Rey._

“Who was it?” She cried as he stood up, pulling her with him.

“Snoke,” he said, fumbling for Luke’s old saber, igniting it to light their way. “I’ve been cut off from the force, but now he’s found me. He thinks I’ve turned. And they’re coming,” he said, repeating what he could learn from the invasion in his mind, right as it came to him.

Rey took her saber back, “Put the collar on, I’ll tell the Resistance I caught you.”

Kylo almost laughed. He wasn’t worried about the Resistance. They were about to have their hands full. The rumble of a far-off explosion confirmed his theory. The cave shook and it felt like the whole world would collapse. He was thankful Starkiller had been destroyed. There was no running from that.

They followed their footprints, all the way back to the cavern with the crates of alcohol. But the tunnel to the waterfall had caved in, dust still settling. He debated on which was faster, moving the rocks or making a hole to the surface, when the way they had just come exploded towards them in a gush of dust and rock. Their ceiling was next.

“Ben!” Rey shouted, afraid. 

He didn’t have time to register her use of his old name. He grabbed her arm and flung her under him, “Hold me tight!” He shouted, and she did, watching him spin the timedoor and hoping against hope. Rocks rained down but he smashed the watch face and fell through the ground, landing in a bright, clean hall. 

Stormtroopers marched past him in single file. Starkiller Base. 

Without Rey. _The timedoor couldn’t transport two people_ , he thought, appreciating the cover of his helmet. Because his face screwed up when the realization hit.

“Ffffuck!” He shouted, hearing the troopers behind him march at a faster cadence. 

Tugging at his sleeve, he looked down at the timedoor. The face was silver now, not blue. Drained. “Fuck!” He said again, pounding a gloved fist into the wall. 

He continued down the hall, trying not to imagine Rey being crushed under rocks. In the darkness alone. He should have put the watch on her, but there wasn’t time. 

He’d find a way to recharge it. Or maybe it did it on its own and just needed time. Where was Rey now? Where _was_ now? It was before Starkiller was destroyed. 

“You, is the prisoner still here?” He demanded, scaring the shit out of a single trooper walking by. 

“Yes, Commander Ren,” he said, his voice mechanical through the helmet.

“And where’s your weapon?” Kylo asked rhetorically, walking quickly. _Why were troopers walking around unarmed?_

She was still here, he’d said, Original Rey. _Not his Rey,_ he thought, begrudgingly. She’d either be asleep or escaped. 

The door to the room was open, the guard gone. An empty table mocked him, restraints wide. He was seconds too late. 

He tried to breathe. “No,” he said to himself. He was repeating the past, fixing nothing. The Reys were all killed or escaped. His artifact useless—for who knew how long. No one to ask, the creators had probably died thousands of years ago.

He ignited his saber and slashed at the chair, the walls, screaming in frustration, feeling the metal melt beneath his strokes. If there was another way to mourn, he didn’t know it. What could have been and what he couldn’t change. Sparks flew into the hall and he tired. It had been a long night. 

He didn’t know what the future held, except for what Rey had told him. That his father and the others came to destroy the base. His father didn’t care about him. He’d probably do it again, whether Kylo was on the planet or not.

  
If he wanted to survive in this timeline, he had to stop them. He’d find Rey again. She could join him, she had a dark side to her. And there was no life for them together with the Resistance. _He_ could train her. Show her how to build her own lightsaber instead of using his grandfather’s. That belonged in his collection.


	11. Let's spend the future talking about the past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **This is the end  
>  You wait to find that I'm still here  
> And you've been waiting for the light to shine  
> Wake up, wake up, wake up  
> I'll be the answer to the question  
> I can't answer, it's a question  
> I've missed you  
> Let's spend the future talking about the past**
> 
> The End by Daughter
> 
> [The Spotify Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7etV4yydTasOAAkJU0sZgn?si=WjvyUemEQ1OvcWIiO_OBWw)

An old woman took her by surprise. It shouldn’t have shocked her to see humans living in the barren wasteland—just like Jakku—and there were moisture farms still in operation nearby.

Rey extinguished her newly-constructed yellow saber. She had been admiring it shamelessly. They weren’t easy to make—and Leia wasn’t there to show her how to do it—but the Jedi texts had helped.

“There’s been no one for so long. Who are you?” The woman asked, feebly, wrapped in a scarf to shield herself from the suns, sinking now towards the horizon.

Rey tried not to stare at the four-eyed camel she was leading by the reins. “I’m Rey,” she said simply. That wouldn’t mean anything to her. She wasn’t from a Tatooine family.

“Rey who?” She pressed, and Rey was about to disappoint her, but she felt a presence and looked. 

There, in the dry expanse of desert, she saw two figures forming. Leia and Luke, her twin masters, smiling at her, sensing her anxiety with the question. Force ghosts. It was her first time seeing Leia again and Rey couldn’t tell if she wanted to cry or laugh.

“Rey _Skywalker_ ,” she said, confidently. It was about time she had a family name. And she wasn’t going to claim _her_ bloodline. She had a chosen family with the Skywalkers and the Solos. She was all that was left of them all, alone in Han’s ship with BB8 for company. 

The kindly, old woman nodded, looking pleased, her eyesight too poor to spot Luke and Leia.

Rey walked on, marveling at the sunsets, wondering where she should go next. Her short To Do List was complete. Mine a kyber crystal on Ilum. Make a saber. Bury the Skywalker’s lightsabers. Now she had time, but didn’t know what to do with it.

“Dropped this, dear,” the kindly old woman said, back again, making Rey jump.

She was holding out Ben’s blue watch, the one Rey had found in the folds of his clothes when he died for her. Rey tried not to look suspiciously at the woman as she took it. But she hadn’t dropped it, she kept it next to her in the cockpit of the Falcon.

“Thank you,” Rey said, putting it on, even though it was heavy and brought back bad memories. Of a kiss and a face with laugh lines and a hand on the back of her neck. Of his thoughts as his lips touched hers, _My Rey_.

She watched the old woman saunter away, seemingly uninterested in further conversation. That’ll teach Rey to leave the Falcon ramp down on planets where the locals had little entertainment.

BB8 mumbled something along those lines and she agreed with him, looking down at the watch again. The face was raised and it was set to a different time, which angered her. She had assumed it broke when they fought her grandfather and she had liked that time stood still after that. That was the way it felt for her too. Kind of broken and stuck in that moment forever.

She tried to press the face down—back where it belonged—but she felt a whoosh as her stomach flew into her rib cage. She dropped through the sand and into cold. Cold metal touching her and she recognized the room, gasping aloud, making the storm trooper behind her look her way. She sensed him, rather than saw him. Remembered him.

Rey looked down at her wrist, clamped down, but the watch was still there. _What the fuck?!_

This was almost a year ago. This was Starkiller Base. This was the interrogation room and Ben was Kylo and Han and Leia and Luke were still alive. And Snoke. And her grandfather.

Her heart pounded as her body got used to the new temperature of the room, to her old clothes, ragged and sand brown, some sand still gritty in her boots. _How was this possible?_

That old woman had tricked her, erased everything she had done. All of the battles and sacrifices and _everything_. This was before Ben loved her, when he was Sith and a nightmare. She had to go, get back to the Resistance. 

Remembering the first time, she reached out for the guard’s consciousness. “You will remove these restraints and leave this cell with the door open.”

He immediately obeyed, “Sounds good.” She was stronger in the force now than she was a year ago. The trooper released her arms and legs and began walking back towards the hall and Rey laughed, “And you’ll drop your weapon.”

“Sure thing,” he said, and she heard a thunk of his blaster hitting the floor.

She stood, feeling weak. This body was still malnourished from Jakku. Dehydrated. Thinner. Tanner.

Picking up the weapon, she peaked around the corner to the empty hall, but stopped, taking a step back inside and hitting the door close button. It hissed and dropped.

Ben _turned_. She could do it again. She didn’t know him then.

Rey sat down on the floor, crossing her legs and setting the gun to the side. She’d wait, process her thoughts, and when Ben read them again he’d know. That they get past this, become more. A dyad in the force. If not balanced by light and dark, then at least balanced with each other.

The watch threatened to slide off her hand and she pushed it higher on her arm, almost up to her elbow before it stayed. Her hands were starting to shake.

Her stomach clenched with hunger and excitement. Ben. She couldn’t wait, smiling on the floor, twisting her faded tabards in her fingers. Her To Do List was a mile long with enemies, but she knew how to defeat them all.

And Ben was coming back.

Because Ben was alive.


	12. Running out of fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **I made my mistakes and  
>  I can never face them  
> Running out of fight  
> But you'd illuminate all  
> Of the darkest places  
> If I could change your mind  
> If I could only turn back time**
> 
> Change Your Mind by Said the Sky, Vancouver Sleep Clinic
> 
> [The Spotify Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7etV4yydTasOAAkJU0sZgn?si=WjvyUemEQ1OvcWIiO_OBWw)

_Why were troopers walking around unarmed?_

She was still here, he’d said, Original Rey. _Not his Rey,_ he thought, begrudgingly. She’d either be asleep or escaped. 

The door to the room was closed, but the guard was gone. He waved a hand, gritting his teeth as the door opened, disappearing into the ceiling with a hiss. The interrogation table was empty, restraints wide, mocking him. He was seconds too late.

“Ben,” a small voice said, and he looked around, seeing Original Rey sitting on the floor. Calling him Ben. And wearing a _timedoor_ on her arm. 

He triggered his helmet and pulled it off, waving his hand to hit the door close button. He set his helmet down in the ashes, gently, half-afraid he was going to startle her.

She was free, why hadn’t she run? Why did she call him Ben? Was this _his_ Rey from Takodana?

Pulling her to her feet, he wrapped his arms around her waist and leaned down to kiss her, but she hesitated for a moment. Right before their lips met, and he pulled back. She wasn’t _that_ comfortable with him yet, she wasn’t the Rey that was just crushed in the tunnel. 

His chin tightened and his eyes watered, but he kissed her anyway. Because she called him Ben and didn’t run away.

She kissed him back—without hesitation now—and he sensed confusion in her. She was expecting him to be _old Kylo._ Images flashed through her consciousness. Him chasing her through the forest, reading her mind, rifling through her personal thoughts, painfully, pushing too hard, _killing his father_.

Kylo pulled away, breathing heavily. She was from the future. The original timeline’s future. He almost couldn’t believe it of himself. To have it in him to kill his father. Out of jealousy and revenge, eager to shore up a relationship that was crumbling with his Sith master and only ally.

He had to sit down, wipe his face and his wet, kiss-rubbed mouth. Rey sat down in front of him, reading him too, looking at his useless, silver-faced timedoor. 

“How many times did you use this thing, before I came back just now?” She asked, seeing his memories. The first trip back: the mistake. The second trip back: the best thing that ever happened to him. Until the cave collapsed.

Her eyebrows knitted when she saw the first trip and raised when she saw the second trip. Months crammed into seconds. Moments that—to him—ended only five minutes ago.

She looked simultaneously mad and shocked, swallowing. Whatever Ben from the future she knew had never revealed these trips. What he’d done.

“To me, that was a lifetime ago,” he said, feeling her _absorbing_ what she’d seen, reconciling the man she knew with who he was.

“How did _you_ get the timedoor?” He asked, closing his eyes and reading the future, months and months, right up to the timedoor’s limits, one year. He stabbed his father, that very night. She trained under Luke. They defeated Snoke. Luke died distracting him after he cornered the last of the Resistance. She trained under Leia and she died doing the same, distracting him across space, a plea to come back to the light. Rey stabbed him, healed him, and he turned. Then, together, they took on Darth Sidious, her grandfather.

“Gods,” he said, seeing his own death, trying to calm his breathing, loud in the quiet room.

She took the timedoor off his body—or where it would have been—had he not disappeared, become one with the force.

“And now we have two,” she said, as if they were a gift and not a curse—as he was beginning to see them. No wonder his future self hadn’t used it. Every time he touched that thing Rey died. He could have brought her back that way, but had opted to surrender what was left of his own life force.

He slid her closer, filling her with apologies and promises. He was hers and he’d do whatever she wanted. She had his memories now, she _was_ his Rey now.

“Why didn’t you just tell me?” She wondered aloud, thinking of the Ben she knew for a year, pretending the force bond was a revelation, fighting with her and never injuring her, loving her the whole time, even as he threatened her life to others. Even when he didn’t turn for her in the throne room, knowing they couldn’t live with the Resistance. 

_Shame_ , he thought. He couldn’t recall the good without the bad. The first trip. Right there on that floor. A crime so wrong his Rey had only forgiven him after watching him suffer for months, starving and bound. And after she very nearly killed him, reading him, pushing too hard, becoming cruel as he tired of it.

“It was war,” Rey muttered, in _his_ defense.

“Don’t justify it,” Ben said. He liked it better when she was mad about it. Because she deserved better than being trapped in a dyad with him.

“I’m not trapped,” she said, crying now. “I missed you. I lost you and everyone,” she said, a silent ask for him to not repeat the past. To let her have Han and Leia, even Luke. 

He pulled her close, into his lap, biting his gloves off so he could warm her with his hands. “Can’t you read my mind, little desert rat?” 

He’d never hurt her again. And if that meant doing it all over, differently, then that’s the way he’d do it. They could be emperor and empress or hermits on Ahch-To for all he cared. There was no surviving for survival’s sake. There was just Rey and as much time as he could get with her.

“Play dead,” he ordered her, standing. He pulled his helmet on and lifted her legs, mashing on the door unlock button.

She laid her head on his chest, trying to wipe a smile off her face as they passed a row of stormtroopers.

She was wondering where he was taking her.

_To my ship. This rock is about to blow._ And he was going to let it.

He entered the hangar, his grip on her tightening as the frigid winter air and snow beat against them. Safely up the ramp into the TIE Silencer, he set her down and she broke character, hiding from view until the ramp had raised, closing with a satisfying boom.

“Here,” he said, handing her his headset as he slid into the pilot seat. “Hail the Resistance and let them know you escaped, they might not destroy Starkiller otherwise.”

She did, and he swallowed, hearing his mother respond, relieved, and very curious how she was hailing her from the Silencer.

“Ben,” she said, smiling as they lifted off, sitting down and buckling into the spare seat behind him. They skirted over snow-covered pines, going so fast she had to hang onto the seat. But he had to get away before the First Order noticed his ship. They’d be space dust soon enough anyway.

“Where are we going?” She asked, her voice shaking as the ship vibrated through the atmosphere.

He entered the coordinates and slammed on the hyperspeed, the stars converging into one white blur.

“Ithor,” he said.

“The Ottega system?” Rey asked. She thought they were going to go help the Resistance. And they would. They’d defeat the First Order and all the threats, not as Jedi or Sith, as Ben and Rey.

“It’s where the Oracle lives,” Ben explained. “You can only visit an Oracle once.”

“Then why-.”

“Because _you_ haven’t yet. And with two timedoors and a view of the future, we’re practically unstoppable. And I want to see,” he said, grinning, “what our future looks like.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I do like a weird genre of dark fic and redemption with HEA...bc that's what SW would be if it were rated R!!!


	13. My creature comforts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **You go past my creature comforts every time  
>  You go past my creature comforts  
> We live on this high  
> Love in the morning and love in the night  
> All of these feelings keep breaking my stride  
> Creature comforts  
> And with that, I'm alright**
> 
> Creature Comforts by Trella
> 
> [The Spotify Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7etV4yydTasOAAkJU0sZgn?si=WjvyUemEQ1OvcWIiO_OBWw)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry my stories are so freakin upbeat at the end. It's the culmination of a week of dark that just explodes out of me so happy for a HEA.

BB8 whistled to let them know they were here.

“Are you _still_ dizzy?” Ben said, reading her on his way to answer the door. He always worried over her. 

“I get like this when I’m super anxious about something,” she said, looking around the house one last time to make sure everything was perfect. There was a cool breeze fanning the curtains, smelling like Lothal’s grassland plains, but they had a fire going, so the rooms were cozy. It wasn’t a grand house, but it was big enough for them to have company.

And damn, were they having company.

Ben opened the round-topped door. “Hey, this is it,” he said, awkwardly. Just as nervous as she was. He held his hand out and let them come in, ‘oohing’ and ‘aahing’ at Ben and Rey’s new house.

Chewie made a loud noise, hitting his head on a dangling light fixture. 

“He said he likes it,” Finn interpreted, incorrectly.

“That ship outside, that a custom TIE? Always wondered how fast she went,” Poe said, curiously, as he trailed Finn and Chewie into the living room, where Rey was waiting. They group-hugged, laughing, Chewie’s arms engulfing them all. 

It had been a few months since they wrapped up their fight against the darkside forces and retreated to start the life the Oracle had shown Rey. Secluded, in the Outer Rim.

“Yeah, it is. Uh, pretty fast,” Ben said, but his mind was on Rey, sitting down before she fell over. 

_Oh, gods._ Rey was always scared when Ben got around Luke. Worried he was going to slip back into carnage mode.

_I won’t,_ he projected, as they came in next. He leaned to let his mother kiss his cheek, her arms full of presents. His dad hugged him, “You still growing?” And Luke was last. Ben gave him a curt nod and closed the door behind him, looking at Rey again as if to say ‘see?’.

Leia bee-lined for her, sitting down to give her a squeeze and look around. “It’s _beautiful_ ," she said, meaning the house. "We brought a few housewarming gifts. Just some necessities.”

“The Falcon going to be okay out there? No raiders or anything?” Han was saying to Ben by the door. 

“No, it’s safe. There’s nothing like that around here,” Ben assured him. 

“The rock formations on Lothal are so interesting,” Finn said, looking out their kitchen window. 

Lothal _was_ beautiful. The rocks formed spires, tipped in a point towards the sky. The yellow borealis dancing above, visible most nights.

Leia was admiring her white dress, nothing fancy, just something Ben had found for her. Her eyes lingered on the timedoor, but she never asked about it. No one seemed to ask probing questions about their dyad abilities and secrets. How they accomplished so much, so easily organized, and so quickly. A force to be reckoned with.

It also helped that everyone was still somewhat afraid of Ben.

“How far are you?” Leia asked, quietly, smiling.

_Pfft._ Rey almost laughed. “I’m not pregnant, I’m just eating better. Ben feeds me _constantly_.”

Leia’s eyebrows ticked tight for a second, shocked. “I wasn’t asking because of your figure,” she laughed, then whispered. “I can sense another light, just a wee one.”

_Oh._ Rey looked down, touching her stomach and wondering. She thought they had more time. Before.

Ben was reading her mind, breaking the conversation with his dad, “What?” He ran closer. “What!?”

Everyone stopped talking and watched as Ben knelt and ran a hand over Rey’s abdomen, less flat than usual. _I didn’t think he'd come this soon!_

Rey wiped at her face, letting Ben kiss her belly, strange with a room full of guests, all gasping simultaneously, congratulating them, producing liquor out of thin air, pouring glasses and passing them about.

“I-I thought I was just dizzy,” Rey said to Ben and Leia. 

Leia seemed pleased she had been the one to detect the baby first, “I can tell you what sex it is, if you like.”

“Oh, don’t spoil it for them!” Han said. “She did the same thing with you, Ben. No surprises with this woman!”

“It’s a boy,” Ben said, confidently, remembering Rey’s vision from the Oracle, the little, old woman buried under several layers of hoods on Ithor seven months ago. “His name is Bo and he has black hair and green eyes.”

“Well, that’s. Specific,” Han said, turning to look at Luke, who shrugged.

Rey smiled at Ben, his blatant enthusiasm. He gave her a kiss and started fussing, grabbing pillows to prop her up, a blanket, running to the kitchen for more food.

Leia was pouring her a glass of water, “Good to stay hydrated…”

“I’m not even hungry, Ben,” she said over her shoulder, but he wasn’t paying attention. In fact, he wasn’t even thinking about food.

_I knew her breasts were bigger._

  
Rey snorted into her water. _Gods._ His one-track mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you had as much fun reading as I did writing!!


End file.
